In 2020, a group of community organizations, including the Kearsarge Food Hub, came together to address food insecurity and mental health concerns in the Kearsarge region of New Hampshire exacerbated by the pandemic and co-created the FEED (Food Expansion, Education, Distribution) Kearsarge initiative. Under this collaborative umbrella, we launched the Tray it Forward program to distribute seedling trays to families in need and community garden sites, followed by gardening education to help folks reclaim the knowledge of how to grow our own food and connect with nature and community through gardening.
When Alice arrived in New Hampshire from Virginia, she admittedly didn’t know much about growing food. As a new AmeriCorps member at River Valley Community College (RVCC) assigned to focus on food security, she was put in charge of the college’s free food pantry and was determined to start a community garden on campus.
“Learning how to grow food was a skill I really wanted to learn,” Alice said. “And I was happy to discover that plants naturally want to grow, too—it’s definitely not as complicated or precarious as I thought it would be!”
She is the main driver behind the school’s new raised beds, which were built this spring and supplied with free plants through FEED Kearsarge’s Tray it Forward program. The produce is collected by passers-by straight from the garden or harvested by Alice and placed in the food pantry fridge, free for whomever on campus needs it.
The new community garden at River Valley Community College in Claremont, NH (Photo Credit: Alice)
In order to encourage participation and bolster people’s confidence regarding just what to do with the fresh produce, Alice has been putting together healthy recipes and cooking tips that utilize both the fresh produce and the pantry’s available shelf-stable goods.
“Large scale, industrial style agriculture is obviously horrible and not sustainable,” explains Alice. “There’s really no long-term future in the current food system in America as it stands, and I think it’s great that we are shifting away from a dependence on it and towards more local and community growers, even more so now after COVID. Food sovereignty is so powerful and brings me so much happiness to play a small part in!”
And Alice has big dreams for the space. Right now, it functions mainly as a victory garden, but future visions include a community gathering space that’s open to the broader Claremont community, featuring both communal and individual plots. A compost pile would “bring everything full circle,” she says. She also sees it functioning as a part of the school’s educational efforts, including science classes that could explore the world of healthy soil and nursing and health science students that could use the space to tap into the food-as-medicine movement.
Alice and the garden at RVCC were just one of the recipients of the more than 360 Tray it Forward trays that KFH and the other FEED Kearsarge partners distributed this spring.
”As we pull out of the COVID crisis,” explains Hanna, KFH’s Creative Director of Community Engagement, “the FEED Kearsarge partners are still committed to advancing not only food security in our region, but community connections that build trust and resilience.” That’s food sovereignty!
Written by Julie Loosigian